How Much for a Life?

One day four years ago, seven-year-old Jacqueline Hubbard and her brother got off a clearly marked school bus and began to walk across the highway. Jacqueline stepped into the path of a big van, which killed her. Last week the New Hampshire Supreme Court, in ruling on a death claim by Jacqueline's family, was faced with an unanswerable question: How much is a human life worth?

There were a number of previous decisions to guide the court, but there was no standard or average. Courts are necessarily inclined to an unsentimental view of death compensations,* and most of them are based largely on the victim's probable earning capacity. Thus a judge was once considered worth $70,000, but a bank clerk only $5,000.

Many states--including New Hampshire--have a ceiling on death claims. In West Virginia, it is $10,000; in New Hampshire, $15,000; in Connecticut, $20,000. In states without ceilings, death claims of $50,000 or more are sometimes paid. The Warsaw Convention (1929) limits compensation for death in international air flights to $8,300; there is no limit on domestic flight death claims.

A New Hampshire jury had placed the value of young Jacqueline Hubbard's life at $7,000; the van company had appealed the verdict as excessive. Last week New Hampshire's Supreme Court considered the speculative evidence. Jacqueline, the court pointed out, had a life expectancy of 50.8 years; had she lived, she would certainly have earned, either directly as a worker or indirectly as a housewife, at least $7,000. Ruled the court: "It cannot be said . . . that the amount of verdict is excessive."

* Once every 12 1/2 minutes during the Fourth of July weekend, somebody's holiday came suddenly to a halt on the highways; in four days, 491 bodies were lifted from the wreckage.

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